Happy Memories
by NoTimeTeen
Summary: Head doctor suggests Johanna to remember nicer things in order to not have nightmares. There are no happy memories, though. So the suggestion is for her to create happy memories, but where at Thirteen could she do it? It's absurd. She has to take it as a joke. And as a joke she tells Katniss what he said. They toy with the idea together. Barely-plotted Joniss.


"I'm so sick of this!"

Sighing impatiently, I turn around, out of my sleep, and look Johanna's way. She's in a sitting position, breathing heavily with her shoulders slumped forward and her hands rolled into fists on her lap.

She turns her head to me. "I'm sick of these stupid nightmares."

I quirk an eyebrow. It's not the first time I feel curious about knowing what it is that haunts Johanna's sleep. It is the first time, though, that I make myself ask about it.

"Just stuff, Twelve," she answers, angrily. "You should know. You've seen my Games, I'm sure."

Johanna Mason crying for help as a Career tries to reach her before she's able to escape the bloodshed at the Cornucopia. Yeah, I've seen it. I just never thought most of those things would affect her. She did win her Games by chopping someone's head off with an axe, after all.

Johanna sees me thinking. "Not everything was just for show." She laughs dryly. "What do you dream about, huh? Kissing Peeta?" Her eyes cross mine as if to let me know she's not serious. "Only we know what we fear, right?"

I sit up slowly. "Well, we really can't help it, can we?" I voice lowly. That only makes her angrier. She throws her body back on her mattress heavily as she grunts.

In the darkness I'm barely able to distinguish her silhouette. The rise of her blanket at her feet, the contour of her legs, of her stomach, the rhythmic dance of her chest and the decline of her shoulders and neck. And her face, drawn against the wall next to her. The pouty thin lips and the subtlety of her nose, and the unnatural bulge of her frowning eyebrows.

Johanna chuckles. "According to the ones that treat me there's a way to stop them." Her head shakes. "Let's throw them into an arena for a day and see if they can science their way out of their heads after."

"Would that feel good?" I tell her doubtfully.

"No. But maybe that way someone would understand why I'm so crazy."

"You're not crazy." Listen to that. I just defended Johanna Mason from her own insults.

"He said — my head doctor, I mean — that my bad dreams are just responses to my bad memories." She gazes at me. "And yes, he spent years of his life studying and read tons of books to figure that out."

I chuckle with her. "That's what they do, apparently," I say. "They tell us what's wrong with us."

"Yeah, as if we didn't already know."

I lift myself on an elbow and squint at her through the blackness. "Did they seriously say such a thing?" She hums in confirmation. "They're sick."

"They said we have nightmares because there's very bad things in our pasts, the geniuses. That if we could remember nicer things our dreams wouldn't be so awful."

"Seriously."

"It's all scientific stuff. My head doctor said so."

I laugh mentally at the naivety of the people of District Thirteen. "Can you believe it?" I say.

"I know, right?" Johanna is silent for a few minutes, then seems to consider the idea for once. "Even if I believed it, though," she says, "there's no really a lot of resources around here to create good memories, is there?"

Even if she's being sarcastic as usual, I think I hear an honest tone of inquisitiveness in her voice. I wonder if she's considering trying to follow such a stupid advice.

"I mean," she continues, "if I were at my District there's a couple of names I could probably confide in to create 'happy memories', if you know what I mean..." She says it in a low volume, almost with a shy note to her voice.

I blink at that, though, not fully understanding. "Um..." I shrug, frowning at the ceiling. "I don't."

Johanna just chuckles again. "Without specifying, let's just say some people would get paid for getting into my pants if I actually believed that would help me sleep better."

My face grows warm. "Without specifying, you said?"

"I didn't say any names, did I?"

I just grunt, uncomfortable.

"Oh, that's right. You're pure little Mrs. Peeta Mellark from the Peeta Mellarks, right? What would you know about this?" Then she starts laughing out loud quite sardonically.

"Shut up, Mason!" I shout, blush still all over my face. I throw my pillow to the portion of her lump I assume is her face.

After a soft thud she shuts up and sighs angrily. "What was that for, Twelve?" Then I imagine she had a better idea as to how to answer to my aggression by saying "Oh, I get it. Is this pillow an invitation to your warm bed, Katniss?" her voice seductive. I watch as the bulge under her blanket drags itself away from the bed and am able to notice the sway she gives her hips — one to the right and one to the left — before I feel my own mattress move beneath me. She's next to me now.

I suddenly feel the warmness coming from her body when her hands snatch away my own blanket. I am blind during the next two or three heartbeats and lose the notion of where exactly she is, and of where exactly I am, too. Then she whispers seductively in my ear, "Wouldn't you like to make my dreams wet?" At the word 'wet' I can almost distinguish how moist her tongue is as it delves into the crook between her teeth to finish the sound.

A very embarrassing sound exits my mouth. It probably could be defined as something half-way between a gasp, a whimper and a sigh. Unfortunately, the mixture of this noises sounds embarrassingly similar to that of a moan and the word I was trying to spell gets twisted by the power of the effect she's having on me as it comes out, sounding more or less like this: "Jo-ho-ho."

My next heartbeat echoes all around the room as Johanna breathes in, apparently attempting to keep an impassive demeanor in order to continue to tease me, but for once my uncontrollable body plays in my favor — my stupid reaction creates in her a series of convulsions, and the next thing I hear is Johanna's loud laugh against my neck.

That goes on for five minutes or so. Johanna laughing and clutching at her sides and turning over again and again as I lay next to her, my body stiff. I feel humiliated. I'm used to Johanna's teasing, but this is stepping over the line.

"Fuck you, Johanna!" I shout furiously after a while, when her laughter finally stops. "Fuck you," I snarl again into what I estimate to be her ear.

My senses fail me, though, and I miscalculated: the next time Johanna leans slightly forward it's her lips I feel against my own, not her ear.

How did that happen, I rather not try to figure it out.

Johanna moves against me and purses her lips just as I push her away. "Oh, Twelve," she says, "I just told you, you could ask." And for the first time, her seductive tone works. My stomach explodes with warmness and my lips feel numb from kissing her. My face is so red right now that she can probably feel its heat from where she lays. "Mmm," she says.

The next few seconds feel as slow as my whole life has felt, most likely due to the fact that my heart is racing in my chest. Johanna leans into me and lays her lips on mine once more. My brain disconnects completely from my body and I feel myself kissing back.

"Oh, Twelve," she moans mockingly against my lips.

 _Push her away_ , I think. _Push her off the bed, run out of the room. Now!_

I don't do anything, though. She moves her lips a bit more before pushing me herself. "Calm down," she whispers. I can't bring myself to answer. Not even to apologize, which should be the right thing to do. "Sorry, Katniss."

However sincere she sounds when she says that, she still stays on my bed next to me. I start feeling uncomfortable. The last time I was so close to someone on a bed besides Prim was the night before the Quarter Quell, when I practically dragged Peeta to share the bed with me. Remembering that detail is like throwing dry leaves in the fire that burns in the pit of my stomach — I feel it rise higher and higher.

I'm so confused right now.

"I'm really sorry, Katniss." Johanna sounds surprised and a bit impressed, but honest. I'm still breathing pretty fast and in a way that she shouldn't be able to ignore. Close as we are, I'm literally unable to distinguish anything. Not her body, not her mood. The only thing that sort of gives her away is a subtle dot of brightness coming from each eye. I have no idea what are they reflecting, but I lock my eyes in there as I try to calm down. "I guess I sort of took advantage of your vulnerable state, huh?" She chuckles and the hairs in the back of my head stand at attention in response to the soft feeling of air being breathed out on my face.

"Shut up," I snarl. I sound furious.

"Seriously, though," she whispers vaguely. "I won't deny I haven't thought about it. But this isn't really the way I'd imagined it."

I finally am able to slow down my heartbeat. "Huh?"

"I mean," she continues, "you have huge breasts and you look pretty good when you're naked and all, Twelve — don't think I haven't noticed." I blush. "But seeing how you behave with Peeta and with that other tall dude Gale I always thought I'd have to work you a bit more." She chuckles again. "Maybe I should've simply climbed in your bed two weeks ago."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know." Johanna waves her hand and lets it fall on my arm. "I always imagined you were rather... romantic." I huff. "But now I know you've just really missed Peeta's co—"

"—O-okay, stop," I cut her off, blushing madly. "Stop that. Peeta and I never even..." I let it fade in the air.

"Oh, c'mon." She shoves my shoulder. "We're sharing your bed. You can tell me anything."

 _I hate myself_ , I think when I feel another wave of warmness crawl up my body at her touch. For just a moment I consider the strangeness of my reactions, the fact that I've hardly ever felt anything like this for anyone — neither boy or girl. Sure as hell never for Peeta or Gale, which is sort of embarrassing.

"For real," I say. "You know the whole thing was just for show..." Although she's silent and I can't see her I complete the image of her face in my mind and picture her eyebrow raised at me in teasing disbelief. "Mostly," I add shortly. "But really, we never did anything besides kissing." I don't know why I'm telling her this.

"Silent Hunter's the one you crave, then," she guesses.

Surprisingly, I laugh. It's sad, ironic and kind of awful to laugh at what I say, but it's the truth and this is Johanna. She won't judge me — hopefully. "Gale? The difference between kissing him and kissing Peeta is that I actually mean it when I kiss Peeta. With Gale is almost always out of guilt."

There's a slightly loaded silence from Johanna after that. Then she says, hesitantly, "So, you don't feel—"

"I don't really know how I feel about either," I sigh, frustrated. "I don't really know how to feel about anything at all right now. I'm the Mockingjay and I have to lead a rebellion, and I have to kill Snow, and hope Peeta stops being a mutt, and hope Coin and her team of bombers don't decide to kill everybody in the Capitol to finish the war. I have too much to worry about to think about my love life." The darkness is what gets me to speak, and by the time I'm finished it's as if I've rid myself of a pretty heavy load that still leaves plenty on my shoulders as for my head to start aching.

Not wanting to get immersed in those thoughts I refocus on what I'm able to see of Johanna laying in front of me.

I squint through half-closed eyelids, being able to make out a few more details of her face. Her slightly widened eyes, her lips pulled up at the corners, the contours of her nose, which wrinkle gently as her skin is pulled by the force of the grimace, her fine eyebrows highlighting the whole as they quirk at around their middles. Johanna's wearing an amused expression — as only she would. I was probably expecting a sort of understanding when I tried looking closer, maybe a bit of a pitiful intention in her double-intended pupils. But no such luck.

My next phrase comes out almost automatically. "I feel as if most of what I do these days is just an automatic response to what happens around me." That's ironic.

Johanna then chuckles and places her hand softly on my cheek. "There's no automatics with you, Mockingjay."

I delve unconsciously in the pleasure that brings to me the physical contact of her hand against my skin. It resurrects something within me. The hunger I'd just felt. Hunger for human contact, for emotional closeness. Right now, it's probably just hunger for Johanna, though. The thought brings back the heat to my cheeks.

"That's why you're the perfect one for the job," she says. But I hear her muffled. Distant. I know what she's trying to say is important and that, by the way she's saying it, she means for me to listen and understand. But right now I can't seem to ignore what I'm usually so good at ignoring, and that is my emotional urges. "When you mean it you know what it is you mean."

I confirm the message she's conveying by leaning into her and pressing our lips together. And there's the fire in me again. The girl on fire, I think ironically. It spreads from my stomach and joins the heat still present in my cheeks. It goes down my limbs until my hands, arms and legs become only what I feel touching them. The mattress beneath us and Johanna's waist inside the crook of my arms. Her short hair sticking into my palms and her legs intertwining at the knees and softly caressing up and down my calves. Her upper lip as it is absorbed in-between my lips and her tongue as it runs in smoothly to caress my teeth.

From her throat escape sounds of rejection for probably a second before all that comes are soft moans.

I unconsciously compare the present feelings to those associated with all my other experiences of a similar order — of a romantic order. The lack of emotion of Johanna's touches to the meaningful caresses of Peeta's hands. The aggressive quality of her lips and posture as she pushes me so that she's on top of me to the possessive, longing interaction of lips that distinguishes my kisses with Gale.

Curiously enough, though I tell myself this experience is devoid of meaning — because this is Johanna Mason I'm kissing and I've never thought of her as anything whatsoever beyond the tags of "ally" and "roommate" — I notice it is probably the first time I'm so passionate about kissing another person. The closest thing was probably with Peeta at the beach during that last tragic day at the Quarter Quell arena, when he gave me the locket that now lies restlessly in my memory and inanimately in my drawer, not twenty feet away. And even that one meaningful moment feels now dwarfed down to minute dimensions, overshadowed by the heat that grows more and more the more I'm conscious of Johanna.

She breaks apart and chuckles. Our breathings are loud and my heartbeat sounds louder in my ears. "Wow, Mockingjay," she whispers. With her hips straddling my middle, she lets her body drop so that she's holding herself up with her elbows on either side of my face. Her lips move against my ear as she speaks. "I will take that as a yes."

I laugh throatily. Hungrily. "Let's make some happy memories," I tell her.


End file.
